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How Nasa saw space stations of the future in 1970

Once upon a time, on a planet called Earth, in a place called the USA, folks knew what space stations were suppose to look like.

If they weren't big spinning wheels, they were fat drums with multiple decks. Radial and axial ports provided docking places for smaller specialised modules and reusable crew and cargo delivery vehicles. Back in those days, they had big rockets that could put an entire 12-man space station up in one launch. Lest anyone worry about putting all our space station eggs in one rocket basket, those rockets were tough enough to shrug off lightning strikes and still launch men to the moon.

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Alas, something went wrong and the tidy drums shrank and metastasised into elaborate, inelegant, multimodular monstrosities.

The cargo and crew delivery vehicles grew and became frail and costly and the tough big rockets became lawn ornaments long before their time.

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The neat thing, however, is that, when we mess up our technology-related choices, we can have a second chance if we decide that we should. This is why I am excited about Nasa's new big rockets. I hope they get them right. Big rockets = big opportunities. But I digress.

This post is made up of illustrations from a 1970-ish Nasa brochure called Space Station: Key to the Future. I've long been fond of this one. The illustration style screams early 1970s, and there are other hints of those ancient days to be found as well.

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The drum-shaped station was designed to be used for artificial-gravity experiments. In the image, the spent Saturn V S-II rocket stage that boosted the station into Earth orbit is attached to the station by multiple cables. The 33-foot-diameter stage acts as a counterweight as the whole assemblage spins end over end. "Down" is away from the centre of rotation, which is about midway between station and stage.

This artificial-gravity capability is the reason why in some of the images that follow men can be seen standing. Artificial gravity was not meant to be a permanent feature of the space station, which was designed mainly to explore the possibilities and problems of weightlessness.

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Gallery: How Nasa saw space stations of the future in 1970

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On Nasa's drum-shaped space station, everyone got their own wood-panelled private cabin. Note the restraint bar extended across the bed above the station crewman's waist; presumably it is meant to keep him from floating out of bed. Note also the image on the cabin wall; it displays the only female we see in this 42-page Nasa brochure. One would like to think that it's a picture of the Nasa Administrator or the President of the United States, but this was 1970, after all.

Apollo space suits relied on zippers and were made mostly of soft parts. Internal air pressure, combined with multiple layers of fabric and plastic, made getting around in one a real workout. Nasa space suit engineers had in mind major improvements for the space station space suit. These would have included features such as better-articulated hard joints.

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Space-suited station astronauts would have had available to them sporty transportation, such as the space scooter depicted here. It includes a docking fixture at the front for linking up with satellites and free-flying modules in need of servicing. The drum-shaped space station is visible in the background.

The space shuttle was originally proposed in 1968 as a low-cost space station crew rotation and resupply spacecraft. That didn't require a very big spacecraft.

The shuttle grew large only after it became obligated to be all things to all customers willing to say they might use it. It launched and assembled part of the multimodular International Space Station; shuttle engineers in 1968 would have considered that to be bizarre.

By 1970, Nasa had more shuttle designs than it could keep track of. Engineers hoped that the Shuttle Program -- whenever it was permitted to formally begin -- would receive enough development funding to produce a fully reusable spacecraft with a low operating cost. The idea was to spend enough money up front to make it cheap and reliable to operate. Engineers spoke of a cost of $10 million (£6 million) per flight and flights every few days.

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That early optimism seems ludicrous now. In fact, it's quite likely that the Space Shuttle would never have been that cheap or reliable, no matter how much we spent to develop it. It's a certainty, however, that we could have built a reusable spacecraft much more representative of our national technological prowess than we did. I think that brought us down in ways we barely understand -- but never mind that for now.

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I've always had a fondness for the triamese Shuttle design shown above. The aim was to save money through the use of common hardware; in this case, a common fuselage and common engines. The single piloted Orbiter, sandwiched between the two Boosters, would have included a crew cabin, a cargo bay, and tanks of liquid propellant to complete insertion into Earth orbit. The Boosters would probably each have had a crew cabin, but otherwise would have been crammed full of propellants. Orbiter and Boosters would all have included turbofan engines for atmospheric flight.

The triamese concept probably wouldn't have worked out quite as well as its proponents claimed -- commonality demanded compromise which limited capability -- but damn, it still looks awfully nifty.